Babelite Collective

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The Babelite Collective is a polity established on the Martian moon of Phobos. It consists the second form of intelligence to evolve on Earth, a bacterium that escaped a lab in the south of Russia and through a long series of events, became established on Phobos.

Origin

In the year 2026, a Russian biotech company uses genetic technology to create a fast reproducing bacteria, designed to deposit massive amounts of raw materials around it, producing in a similar fashion as to how a coral reef is built from the shells of dead polyps. This technique is used to create huge structures, including bridges and residential areas. As of this time, the technology's main flaw is how to program the bacteria. The above image shows an unexpected side effect of these efforts. In their tanks, diversity and fast lifespans kick darwinian evolution into full gear, and intelligence develops in one of the bacteria culturing tanks. They escape due to eventual damage from World War III and begin creating a field of huge elaborate skyscraper-esque structures fanning out from the lab site, in the middle of the Kazakh desert. Realizing the potential threat, the EU government offers the bacteria, which communicate through writing out their thoughts in deposited sediment, a rocket bound for Mars to jettison a small number of them onto the Martian moon of Phobos. In exchange, the EU would be allowed to sterilize the towers with an antibiotic aerosol, used as a stopping mechanism for the unmutated ever-expanding version of the bacteria. Now, the bacteria have covered a good portion of Phobos in towers, giving an alien appearance to one of the only other intelligences in the solar system.

Relations with Humanity

As of 2100, all powers are prohibited by the Babelites from visiting Phobos, except for a small zone in one of the craters that serves as the diplomacy region, which has a human outpost for Babelite-Human negotiations. In return, the humans probibited the Babelites from settling on the Martian surface, let alone leave the moon.

Society

The Babelites have a very loose society with basically no need for technology; they can just control their genetic code, so as to program themselves to turn unused sediment into whatever they need. Their intelligence is very alien to humanity, suprised such a lifeform could have evolved on Earth. The Babelites are a hive mind, basically many individuals working as one through a network of chemical signals. They communicate with Humanity through a written language similar to Brail, depositing sediment in raised dots and bars creating a legible message. They express themselves through architecture, creating their famous towers, hence their English name, a reference to the Bible story of the Tower of Babel. Overall, the hive mind has the intellect of a genius adult. They have realised that the body on which they reside, Phobos, is slowly deorbiting, and gradually falling into Mars. In response, they have recently built a sedimentary layer that functions as a highly efficient solar sail, that will eventually push the moon into a more stable orbit. Some Human powers have expressed concern that this is an attempt to move the whole moon out of Martian orbit altogether; if this is true, some theorize they might head to the Asteroid Belt and claim one of the valuable space rocks claimed by numerous other polities. Thus, a UN group of delegates was sent to Phobos so they can negotiate a treaty with the Babelites to prevent this. They should arrive by years's end.